Prison Pipeline

MISSION STATEMENT

Prison Pipeline is a radio program dedicated to educating the public about the Oregon criminal justice system. Our goal is to present a unique understanding of the criminal justice system, address the root causes of crime, and challenge the status quo. We seek to promote awareness and activism in order to foster a safe, healthy, and just society.
Tune in every Monday evening at 6:30 to hear our hosts Karen James, Adam Carpinelli, Amy Johnson and Ruth Kovacs explore the Oregon justice system with a variety of guests. Hosts rotate weekly. Prison Pipeline's engineers are Danielle Parks and Michael Ftaclas.

Karen James with David Leslie, Executive Director, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.The California prisoner hunger strike to end indefinite solitary confinement was suspended after 60 days.More prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the United States than in any other democratic nation.EMO is working to raise awareness about the issue and to reduce solitary confinement in Oregon prisons.

An update from Isaac Ontiveros, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, on the California prisoner hunger strike which began on July 8th. The prisoners are demanding an end to indefinite solitary confinement which the United Nations considers torture. On 8/19 a federal judge approved a request from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to force-feed inmates if necessary. Prisoners’ demands are:1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse 2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria 3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary

Karen James with Delphine Criscenzo and Liysa Swart discuss the making of a video produced by Delphine entitled “Lay Down Your Life. The Cost of Freedom” featuring Liysa Swart and Louise Bauschard, Voices Set Free.Watch the video: https://vimeo.com/68270692

Peter Pincetl interviews Zachariah Blott of New Freedom College, a nonprofit college that provides affordable 4-year college education available to inmates.Their program is designed for inmates and priced for inmates who want a true college education, offering a print-based correspondence program through the mail, allowing incarcerated students to work toward a 2-year or 4-year diploma in a variety of useful majors.

Solitary Confinement and the California Prisoner Hunger Strike.Excerpts from The Sunday Show with Philip Maldari, KPFA, Berkeley.Guests are Carol Strickman, a staff attorney at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children; Terry Kupers, M.D.,

Karen James with Adam Carpinelli, Oregon Jericho, who along with other organizations rallied on July 8th at the Portland Justice Center in solidarity with 30,000 prisoners throughout California who began refusing meals.In 2011 prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent

Audio

Grace discusses with Mark and his family about the Thousand Kite Project, concerning communication and human rights. The issue is raised of the high cost of communication with the incarcerated, and how that basic right should not be a profit for business.

Grace also talks with Mark about his music (of which his song is the featured intro/outro music) and how it has been a positive force in his life.

What is it about the structure of gangs that draws youth into it's hands and what kind of support can we as parents and community members provide to help our youth realize their real potential?

Join host Carlos Chavez on Monday December 5th on KBOO's Prison Pipeline for a discussion on gang youth. My guests will be gang mediators Luis J Rodriguez and Eddie Bocanegra. We will talk about what it is that attracts young people into joining gangs and about some of the work that they are doing to help young people avoid the violence and abuse that gangs ultimately provide.

Luis J Rodriguez is a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level. He has become a leading gang expert testifying through affidavits, phone testimonies, and court appearances in more than 60 cases, mostly deportation cases to Mexico and Central America. His thirty years of urban peace and gang intervention work was utilized in the development of the Community-based Gang Intervention Model with around forty other L.A. gang peace advocates and interventionists, which the L.A. City Council approved in February 2008, and is now sent across the United States and other countries. He’s also now a trainer for the Advancement Project’s gang intervention academy.

He wrote the award winning memoir Always Running, which was a compelling account of his life growing up as a Chicano gang member in South and East Los Angeles. Always Running is a brutal story of youth exploration, survival and of transformation in and out of the gang life and is a testament of will and triumph of the human spirit. There are over 400,000 copies in print since its release in 1995 and is widely regarded as a classic of Chicano literature.

Rodriguez has recently released a part two of this memoir titled, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions and Healing, which explores the continuing struggle as a young adult facing addiction, abusive family and marital relationships and the trying development of an independent and meaningful career. It is his quest for balance in the wake of turmoil and is every bit as eloquent as his first award winning book.

Eddie Bocanegra works for CeaseFire out of the University of Illinois at Chicago. He spent 14 years in prison for a murder he committed when he was 17. Bocanegra now specializes in high-risk mediation and intervention with youth living on the southwest side of Chicago. He is a mentor, court advocate, and programming developer promoting rehabilitation services in the Latino community. He gives workshops on violence prevention, gang awareness, conflict resolution, and issues of juvenile justice and health.

Bocanegra is an accomplished artist who participates in various art initiatives within the Latino community. He volunteers with Urban Life Skills, a mentoring program for high-risk youth. He is currently completing his degree in social work at Northeastern Illinois University and plans to pursue a doctorate.

He was recently featured on a new award winning documentary titled, The Interrupters. Bocanegra is one of three extraordinary mediators of the CeaseFire program who dedicate their lives to saving young people from committing and becoming victims of the violence that they were once very much a part of.

Host Megan Vosk hosts a discussion on the Death Penalty with Rachel Hardesty, of the Conflict Resolution Program at Portland State University, and Jeff Ellis, criminal defense attorney and teacher of Capital Punishment at Lewis and Clark Law School.

Prison Pipeline's John Thiemeyer interviews two veterans, Dr. Bud Brown and Mike Hasty about 'vets and the criminal justice system', The Bunker Project, and the workshop they did on this subject for the Vets for Peace Conference in August at PSU.

Prison Pipeline brings a discussion of the missing link that has traditionally existed between postitive personal growth that many motivated prisoners experience during their incarceration and the reality of release. Topics include the difficulty for the ex-convict in finding service agencies and support groups in the free community to sustain and nuture those pre-social skills and dreams concieved inside prison walls.

People with mental illness are overrepresented in the criminal justice system.Statistics show that more than half of those incarcerated have a mental or emotional issue and many also have an addiction.The majority of people with mental illness who are incarcerated are low-level, nonviolent offenders who ended up in jail or prison because they essentially exhibited in public the symptoms of untreated mental illness.

After these people serve their time and reenter their communities, their sentence continues.They are not only faced with the daily complexities of reentering society and adhering to the conditions of parole.They are also faced with homelessness, inadequate mental health treatment, a gutted health care system, disruption in medication and overall lack of support.

Washington County NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) has formed an Action Team that meets monthly to address the challenges and improve services for those re-entering the County from jail or prison.To join contact NAMI at 503.356.6835.

Prison Pipeline hosts Jay Thiemeyer and Peter Pincetl discuss the importance of stable housing to successful re-entry. With guests Larry Johnson of the Highland Access Re-entry and Recovery Program and Liv Jenssen of the Transition Services Unit from the Dept. of Community Justice, topics visited range from the challenges faced by families to services provided to individuals with special needs, such as those with mental health issues and the geriatric. Jay offers several opportunities for listeners to get involved-if you or someone you know is interested, please email prisonpipeline@lists.riseup.net.

Comments

Hi, I am starting to reach the end of my rope of resources, and I thought I'd try you guys and see if you have some advice or helpful programs for this sort of matter.

I have a close friend who has been on the run for a while (over 2 years). He was arrested and charged with 2 felonies, Burglary and something else similar, for going onto his own property that was supposed to be abandoned. The people who were living there didn't pay rent for over 1 year, were impossible to reach by telephone, notified the landlord twice in person that they were moving. The landlord was getting letters from the city for code violations, and abondonment, he's fairly certain one of both of their main utilities (water or electric) were shut off, mail piled up, mostly empty house, etc. He was on the property one day, removed a couple items, mostly just assessing the amount of work to be done, came back the next day, had been there for a while when the cops showed up. They asked if he had been inside the premises, he said yes, that he felt he was within his rights as landlord, cops said you thought wrong. Everyone, including public defense acted as though this was an open and shut case of guilt, so no research was done to find out if anyone was even living there to be burgled in the first place!!

We don't know what to do now. I thought I would be able to hire a lawyer eventually who could prove this whole thing to be ridiculous, but now I am finding out any lawyer would be minimum $5000, most likely much, much more! I don't understand a system that can charge someone with a bogus crime, and leave them to the wolves. It seems wrong to tell someone that if they don't have $10,000 for their own defense, then they may as well take the charge, do the time, and try to move on with their life. Is there any such thing as a lawyer who cares, and will take a case based more on values than money?

Do you guys have any programs that offer discounted criminal defense lawyers, or know how I can maybe represent him myself if I can get all the facts right, or get copies of police reports, etc.? Any advice at all would be helpful...

Do you want to know more about the topics we’ve been discussing on Prison Pipeline?

CR10 was presented with more than 3,000 folks participating in 200 workshops. Each organization is working hard to focus on their mission.
Listed below are some organizations and contact information that we have mentioned on Prison Pipeline and a few more that are additional sources of information.

National STOPMAX Campaign Taking the Next Steps. Concerning the use of isolation and devices of torture in U.S. prisons. Search Google for:
American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) National STOPMAX Campaign. - Human Rights Coalition - Lugman Abdullah with Youth Service, Inc. - Back to Society, Inc, HRC.

Ban the Box in your Community -All of Us or None (A great 23 minute DVD -Locked Up..Locked Out - that is available for a small donation. Telephone 1-415-255-7036 - X337 to order. Linda Evans from San Francisco and Susan Burton from Los Angeles and Portland’s own Patty Katz from Partnership for Safety and Justice (start with Google) are all working on this issue. You can email: info@prisonerswithchildren.org for a lot of excellent information. Legal Services for Prisoners with Children show a page on the web “10 Things You Can Do - To Support the Struggle for Prisoners’ Rights”

FILMS TO SEE:
The CRITICAL RESISTANCE 10th Anniversary Film Festival
Showed the following films. I’m not sure about the availability of these films, but perhaps if you Google the name of the films that interest you, there will be enough information to help you see these films.